Interview with the CTO of Buuy.co.uk

I’m really chuffed to have got Justin Hodnett, the CTO and co-founder of Buuy.co.uk to give us a little insight into himself and Buuy.co.uk.

Most of our UK readers have probably heard of Buuy and some even selling on the platform, but for those who have not then check out our article about the platform: Buuy.co.uk – A new UK Marketplace Article

So without further ado, here is the interview.

Interview with Justin Hodnett, CTO of Buuy.CO.UK

Q. Who are you and what is it that you do?

My name is Justin Hodnett and I am the CTO (Chief Technology Officer – fancy name for Geek in charge!) and also one of the co-Founders. The other co-founder is Scott Janaway. My background over the last 20+ years has always been in I.T.. No matter what job I had over the years – I spent a lot of time in retail and in the security industry I was always drawn back to IT. I think my love of IT and the digital world came at a very early stage when I was brought a Spectrum 128k – with a tape deck (posh extra at the time) – which now ironically we through a seller on Buuy do in fact sell games for that same machine. Over the years my skills in IT and everything it stood for developed and as time went on the machine I owned got better and better eventually ending up with a full-on PC set up in my mid-teens paying well over £1,000 for it – now the same machine can be found solely for scrap parts. When I hit 18 the internet was still in its early stages and I used to spend hours “surfing the web” and seeing what was out there. I used to get the Free AOL disks off magazines and worked out I didn’t pay for internet for over 18 months thanks to these disks – opps – not my fault I found a loophole! So during that time skills developed even more and just as I turned 19 I ended up working nights as a security guard in North London, at the same time I saw a home study course for learning to build websites with something called “HTML” – No idea at the time, but thought why not, so I paid £hundreds of pounds for this course and received a box, yes a box full of study material and the only thing you needed was a PC with notepad and that’s it. So during the nightshifts I studied the material writing notes etc and then going home and turning “notes” into actual websites, learning how to write “Hello World” – in the center and in bold! – When I saw that on the screen for the first time I was hooked. I cracked on and completed the course in a few months, got a lovely certificate and went out looking to put businesses on the “web” for a hefty price. My first “job” was a hotel in North London which I’d previously worked for, I convinced the owner to allow me to put the hotel on the internet and charged him a fortune for the work – I thought I like this! Set up my own little firm and carried on. Within a year I had to give it up but my skills carried on developing into Javascript / JS and PHP. So between then and now – I could literally go on about everything, but now I’m able to use my skills in IT with Buuy. Yes, they are limited but still very strong, eventually my role will be handed over to someone else to allow me to concentrate on running the day to day tasks of Buuy.

Q. What is Buuy.co.uk?

Buuy.co.uk is a simple easy to use and most importantly Free to use marketplace. Think of us as the Free UK alternative to eBay UK!

Q. What sort of online sellers does Buuy.co.uk cater for?

As we believe eBay UK is our only competitor here in the UK, if its on eBay, we want it on Buuy. Buuy is set up to be used by the average family sorting out the kids toys or the shed in time for Christmas to make extra cash and extra room right up to the hardcore sellers, huge businesses selling hundreds of thousands of listings and more. The site isn’t set up to be solely for craft, or things you can’t find on the high street – we want it all. We believe every UK as a right to make more money on selling their items, whether they are old, new, dropshipped, upcycled, recycled or anything else for that matter. With no fees at all at any stage of Buuy, you’re guaranteed to make more money. The only fee you do pay and that’s PayPal – and the only reason we use them is because of the payment protection for sellers and buyers – and that’s very important to us. Sellers can in fact not use PayPal if selling locally by the “Cash on Delivery” option and taking out PayPal altogether.

Q. What makes Buuy.co.uk different?

You’ll find that a lot of websites claim to Free, UK lovers and more.. and then find out that there are hidden fees, servers are based outside of the UK to save money and the customer support team isn’t nowhere near the UK.. Buuy is a full based UK company – every aspect of the company is UK. Also, unlike other marketplaces – when at any point are you ever going to be able to speak to a co-founder on email or phone? Try arranging a call with Devin Wenig – CEO / President of eBay – it won’t ever happen. You want to speak to Scott or myself – lets arrange it! My mobile number – personal number is on the bottom of every email. We believe that being like this makes us stand out from the rest, yes we’ve built and created Buuy, but it’s the sellers and buyers who will mould it into the platform that they want – and this takes time. The sellers understand that we’ve not got millions in the bank, nor or we a huge team – it is just Scott and myself, no one else – but there is help from friends when needed, and this is proving invaluable at the moment – eventually the friends will be joining us as staff.

Q. What the future Plans for Buuy.co.uk

I’d like to say we want to take over the world using the same business model – but why? That’s when things go wrong, the bigger you get your eye goes off the ball, you start missing emails, not talking to sellers and buyers and sorting issues out on a personal level. In the beginning yes rolling out this business model globally would have been amazing to do of course, but we decided against it, we decided to keep this amazing growing company 100% UK based. The online sellers in the UK deserve an amazingly easy to use marketplace that’s Free to use. Eventually we’ll look into our own advertising – TV, Radio, Display, etc but at the moment, we’re doing just fine.

Q. How can online sellers register for Buuy.co.uk

Its very simple to join Buuy.co.uk > https://www.Buuy.co.uk/Join – for the info and then a link to the actual registration page – which takes less than 2 mins to join.